Tight Spot (a Cautionary and Impolitic Tale from Beyond)

Mom gave me this worn out yellowed copy of a story she wrote in college when I was first experiencing boys. Boys whom she gave nicknames. One was "The Python" for his kissing technique.

TIGHT SPOT

Every virtuous female finds herself at one time or often in a situation known by her sisters as a "tight spot." This situation is as inevitable as being born and entails twice the struggle. Some girls thrive on it. They do not realize that they are experiencing a danger more damaging to their maidenly charms than a sagging hipline or inability to put up a good front. They refer to these harrowing situations as "exciting conquests" or LIVING, and are not even aware that they have been in a tight spot until it is too late.

However, for those femmes who do recognize a tight spot and are anxious to edge out of it without marring either face, form, or future we have compiled this page from our handbook of tested methods (tabulated by on-the-spot-virgins) which are guaranteed to provide the cornered coed with the proper response when wedged by some drooling Don Juan into that "tight spot."

Scene: Parked car. Rock Quarry. (Jock has pure, wholesome, angelic etc. tackled in the corner as he gives a graphic description of touch football.)

He: Nobody kisses like you, doll, like nobody ...
She: (Touchback technique. Chapter 5.) Do you know that the whole kissing process is controlled by one muscle ... the aubiculoris oris? Every time you pucker up you owe it all to your aubiculoris oris ...

Scene: Parked car. Second dirt road on the right outside the city limits off Highway 40. (Aggie has young, sweet, innocent etc. cringing in corner as he explains the facts of animal husbandry to her. Sobbing, pleading have proved futile for the young, sweet etc.)

He: When I'm close to you doll, with your sweet face next to mine and your lips so near, I can't breathe.
She: (Chapter 20. You'll wonder where the fellow went.) Now that you've brought it up, Charley, I've often wondered what that peculiar wheezing sound you make sometimes is caused from ...

Scene: Johnston Hall. Front west wall. (Big Frat Cat has untouched, pristine, naive etc. pinned ... figuratively speaking, of course ... against the wall.)

He: You've got to realize doll, the game is played a little faster up here than back home in Filthy Springs, Arkansas. Like live it up!
She: (Chapter 3. Gone with the wind.) Did ah evah tell you about how ah cured mah trench mouth without evah goin' to the doctah?

Scene: Blanket Party. Cosmo Park. (Husky outdoor type faces desperate, fresh, glowing etc. threateningly.)

He: Aw, c'mon doll, that's what blankets are for! Have another can of ...
She: (Chapter 13. When all else fails.) Whoops! How clumsy of me. My, that makes things all soggy, doesn't it?

Mom's First Article in Showme, Reprinted in Campus Humor

The Mizzou campus magazine was named "Showme" and here is the contributor's page for the first issue that ran Mom's humor.

Click the photo of the contributors page to read it.


It's such a cute photo of her.

I made a silkscreen based on this photo.






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Here's the cover of the magazine that did the reprint:

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And here's the article. Again, click each page to read it.

Blog from Beyond, Part One

Editor's note: This is the first column in our series honoring the pre-blog writing skills of the Late Queen Mum. This is from the 9/28/55 edition of the Harris Collegian, when she was 19.

The Colyum
by Marge, Girl Revolutionist

To state the matter bluntly, I'm fed up with standing in line. To state it emphatically I'm chock-full, saturated. crammed and replete with standing in line. In the short time since school has begun I have (by actual authenticated count) been a member of ten massive, protracted, elongated, unparalleled lines. I do not like to stand in lines. Right now if Marlon Brando came to Harris especially to play the bongo drums for me I wouldn't even stand in line to see Him. I'm sorry, Marlon, but I feel this bitter experience has warped me for life. I shall never again go to a show, shop at a super-market, ride an escalator, do the Bunny Hop, or indulge in any of the other harmless pleasures which involve rows of people because of the line-phobia I've developed.

I do not profess to be the only line-phobic in school; I realize there are hundreds. You can recognize them because now, even when they're not in a line, they unconsciously shift their weight from one foot to the other to ease the load; they appear to be craning their necks for someone to come back from lunch, or a coffee break, or wherever these people who keep lines waiting on them do go; and they have a certain tense expectant manner as if primed to shout "I AM!" to the laconical question, "Who's next?"

The fact that there must be lines for order is obvious; I don't deny their value in keeping down cases of mob damage, fainting, bodies being crushed underfoot, etc. My argument is this: Must we stand in line?

My own personal solution is quite elementary my dear Watsonians. Tomorrow I am bringing a camp-stool to Harris. It is collapsible and has a charming vari-hued striped canvas seat. It will fit very snugly into my roomy locker and the next line-up (school) I go to I shall have it clasped firmly under my arm. After taking my place in the "procession" I shall unfold my stool and camp. During my two or three day siege of prosaic heel-cooling, I shall make signs like "Are You a Line-Keeper-Waitinger?" or "Join Our Line. See the Back of Someone Else's Head!" or "Why Be Half Safe? Join Our Line, By Tomorrow You May Need What You'll Be Standing In Line For."

I have tried talking to my fellow linees to while the time away but I have found it more expedient to talk to my pet lavender gopher, Fred. The minute Fred and I start chatting the length of the line goes down considerably. (They don't know Fred is invisible and even when I tell them it still makes them nervous.) Of course, Fred is only useful the first few hours, after that all that remain are a bunch of die-hards who just won't give up.

I hope my solution will be a help to the other line-phobiacs, if not, a petition has been started to have one of our Psych professors do some mass analysis. All you have to do is sign up; the line forms at the rear.

Timberrrrrrrrrr!

Two massive pin oak trees are being removed from their curbside place in front of my ranch style home. Cleaning up the acorns and leaves has become too expensive. The pin oaks hold their dead leaves during winter only releasing them now and then to be sure your lawn looks a mess. The acorns are a hazard underfoot. The sidewalk is broken and heaved up by roots which are heading for the cement slab my house rests on.

The trees are over 100 feet tall and if my arms worked I could touch my own fingers if two of me were hugging the same tree. But obviously I am no tree hugger. I have nagged City Hall relentlessly to get rid of these trees. Yesterday three fellows cut branches and chipped up the wood. Men in trees. Turn off the television.

Viva La Queen

My mother never gave out information about reproduction and I never asked. When I was nine I heard her apologize to a guest for not being able to offer napkins at lunch so I proudly retrieved the sanitary napkins from the bathroom and plunked them down on the table.

All information I got was referenced to animal behavior with embarrassed distain and disgust. Her wedding night was a bloody humiliation. The marital act was a duty performed but never enjoyed.

So I read all the books in the sixties and introduced conversations about sex to my children in nurturing ways. I thought I had covered the subject admirably when one day the Queen arrived home after a sixth grade movie about sex.

"Horrible!' Why didn't you tell me about this stuff?" she accused.

So I wasn't surprised when I had to prove to her that her maternal background was French. My word was not enough. And although my vision was blurred due to an eye examination she insisted I find the written reference before she would admit she was wrong.

Last night Gary's butt phoned my house three times. When I phoned him to tell him to stop sitting on his pager blackberry gizmo, I let myself engage in a brief discussion of how Q was mis-reporting grandmother information. Gary jumped at the chance to say she should not blog at all as the girls where he worked did not want to be mentioned on her blog.

Well, she did call them the P---- Posse but she did not get into their nationality. If she had called them Germans I can see why they might have been steamed but P---- Posse is harmless fun. Viva La Queen!

Queen_Mum Vs. Wild

When people don't post daily, faithful readers query, " Is she sick? Did she fall?" But sickness or falling would be grist for a post. There is no grist at this old persons mill.

I eat whatever one lame index finger can snag and propel to the mouth. I read blogs. I sleep long and deep. And I watch television.

I just watched the Discovery Channel "Man vs. Wild" where I learned to bite off the bodies of ants for valuable protein when stranded without food in the wild. I was told to never ingest the ant head as its savage mandibles can inflict great pain.

The very same week I read a blog where people duped an ant colony from invading their house by creating a barricade using dishwashing detergent. Coinkydink? Or grist.

Memorial weekend there was a M/Wild marathon and I learned when I am stranded on the African savannah without water all I need to do is locate some fresh elephant dung. This can be squeezed mightily over the mouth until the life saving fluid is released. Splash! Dehydration prevented.

The next step is to observe vultures so full from scavenging zebra carcass they cannot fly. This assures Man the kill is recent. So just go to it and smell. If it doesn't smell rotten go ahead and dig in. He ate the zebra raw but I might want to build a cooking fire. Just need to be sure to keep flint in my pocket in case my matches got wet.

LIFE AMONG LIARS

When I worked in an office I never left for the day without cleaning my desk off. Phone numbers were kept on a Rolodex and a month-at-a-glance calendar was filled out and followed. In my day there was ignorance and incompetence but nobody I worked with lied.

Things are different nowadays. This old lady I've become can't read her own handwriting. Can't hold a phone to her ear. Looks at a date and writes it on the wrong month. Last week I organized all my names and phone numbers on a page on the computer. BIG. This week I started following up on who dropped the ball on my feeding apparatus. The world famous post-polio rehabilitation doctor DID send a Letter of Medical Necessity to Amanda, O.T. Twice. The O.T. department isn't answering the phone. The letters will be faxed to Angie so she can submit to Medicare for denial. She may be the ball-dropper.

In the meantime I tried to eat a spinach salad yesterday unsuccessfully. Today it took an hour to get a slice of banana nut bread to my mouth and it has been an uphill battle since then. The tastiest thing I've eaten this week was a bratwurst and twice baked potato Sherrie brought me when she did my hair. Brats 'N Beauty. It works for me. I wish her shop sold durable medical equipment. No lie.